Developer Andrew Bodnar - who was behind the failed purchase of the Longyard Golf Course - says God wants you to be rich but it's likely not a belief held by investors in his projects.
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His Sydney-based company, Kingdom Developments, has sold shares in everything from existing apartment blocks, vacant land to redevelop, golf courses, a resort - even an island.
But many of them have gone into receivership, been taken over by lenders and sold, forced onto the market, or even lost million-dollar deposits after the company walked away from the purchase.
The result is some investors won't be seeing any return from the thousands of dollars they've invested.
The company is now scrambling to find a lender willing to offer them finance to save just a handful of the more than 20 projects left uncompleted.
In the process of looking for a lender, Kingdom scrubbed clean its website, Facebook and YouTube accounts - Mr Bodnar saying it was because they didn't want to be seen touting for new business during the refinancing bid.
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The first domino to fall was a nine-storey apartment complex in Gladstone Avenue, Wollongong.
Lender Keystone Capital had offered a two-year facility to Kingdom. When it wasn't repaid on time, Keystone took control of the property and sold it in December.
The $6.2 million sale price was only enough to cover what was owed to Keystone and another lender, leaving nothing for the 18 investors in the project.
Keystone also took control of a second Kingdom property in Austral for the same reason - selling it this week.
In a 45-minute pre-recorded investor briefing earlier this week - audio only with no chance for investors to ask direct questions - Mr Bodnar outlined a litany of woe for the company.
Having invested in property across the country, five of their properties have been sold since December - some after the lender took control.
Another nine are on the market - some at the lender's insistence.
Four more are in receivership while there are nine where the company doesn't have the funds to complete the sale and have either chosen to walk away and lose their deposit or try to set up a joint venture.
Refinance bid
Mr Bodnar said he was in discussion with lenders to try to save the six remaining properties from what once seemed like a burgeoning portfolio.
"A couple of the lenders have met with us in our office and have done due diligence looking at the evaluations and the whole entire portfolio," Mr Bodnar told investors.
"[They're] looking to see what they can refinance, whether they can do all of them or some of them or part of them.
"If we don't get any offers at all then we are in the last chances of being able to save these properties before they are sold."
The Kingdom process was to raise money for the projects by selling shares to investors, with each project set up as a separate company (the latter is a common practice of developers).
Those who got in early got a cheaper share rate, the price rising for those who entered the deal late.
The idea was to sell enough shares to cover the property's purchase costs.
One Wollongong investor paid just under $100,000 a share for a property that is now in receivership.
As well as residential properties, Kingdom has looked to buy golf courses in Tamworth and Windsor, Aanuka Beach Resort in Coffs Harbour, and Victor Island, in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef.
Mr Bodnar told investors he was hoping the refinance effort would save the Windsor course, though admitted they only had a few weeks before it went into receivership.
The Coffs Harbour resort bid is yet to be completed due to a shortage of investors.
As for the island, Mr Bodnar said Kingdom acted as a facilitator for the investors - which included Kingdom director Samuel Hamrosi.
Media reports stated Mr Hamrosi wanted to turn the island into resort-style accommodation which could also be used by his family when not in use.
The island was bought for $3.6 million in March but has now been put back on the market.
Mr Bodnar is involved in the Freedom City Church in Moorebank - a group that helpfully includes its bank details on its website for ease of donating.
In the foreward to Mr Bodnar's 2015 book God Made Millionaire (a pun on Self-Made Millionaire), church pastor Murray Baker said the developer "oozed sincere positive attitudes, acceptance and success".
In his book, Mr Bodnar makes repeated references to the "Kingdom of God" - which suggests that is the origin of his company's name.
It is also in this book that Mr Bodnar insists that God truly wants people to be rich.
"It's time to accept in your heart that God wants you to be wealthy, prosperous and lacking nothing," he wrote.
In 2000, as a 16-year-old, he attended a property and stock seminar, which he wrote changed his life.
"It was like learning about real-life Monopoly and all I could think about was four green houses and then a red hotel," he wrote.
Two years later he bought a two-bedroom apartment with his parents acting as guarantors.
Mr Bodnar soon took up a job as a real estate agent and, in 2006, decided to buy the business.
In an eerie similarity to Kingdom's current situation, there was a property market downturn and the real estate business struggled.
Despite putting in more and more money, the business failed and Mr Bodnar closed the doors in January 2011.
"I couldn't see the writing on the wall because I was completely oblivious to what was going on around me, just like a horse that sprints around a race track with blinkers on their head," Mr Bodnar wrote.
"I was too prideful to accept my mistakes and too blinded to notice my poor decisions."
Glen Humphries
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
